For Turkish media, Taksim story reveals flaws, threats

The coverage of the
Taksim Square protests will not be remembered as a moment of glory for a number
of Turkish mainstream media. While demonstrators were being tear-gassed and
beaten by police a week ago, CNN Türk was airing a
documentary on penguins and Habertürk
had a debate on mental illness.

NTV, another leading news channel, which had one of its news vans
destroyed in Taksim Square due to people's anger at the media, had to issue an
apology for their coverage. In a meeting with some 300 employees Dogus Media
Group CEO Cem Aydın confessed that the criticisms were mostly justified. "Our
audience felt betrayed," he said. "When the people want to receive news, they
should receive it from us. Otherwise we see that great information pollution
occurs." The CEO promised to use this as an opportunity to do the job better
and win back the audience's trust. Indeed, in the following days, most
channels, apart from those tightly associated with the government, improved
their coverage of the events.

In the highly
polarized Turkish environment the press is often seen as part of deeply entrenched
and volatile ideological alignments. News outlets are regularly considered "weapons
of the enemy" and therefore their journalists, news vehicles, and headquarters
are seen as legitimate targets by angry and vindictive demonstrators. This
polarization also undermines solidarity among journalists and weakens their capacity
to stand up as a profession against the authorities' challenges to press freedom.

In Turkey, however,
the alignment of the media is not simply inspired by ideological partisanship. As
exposed in a groundbreaking report by the leading think tank TESEV, Caught
in the Wheels of Power, the Turkish media sector in the last two
decades has been going through an intense phase of both liberalization and
consolidation, leading at the same time to a proliferation of private
broadcasters and the emergence of media behemoths.

This process of cross-ownership
has been compounded by conglomerate mixing of media and non-media interests,
particularly in sectors such as telecommunications, public works, tourism, or energy
that heavily depend on state patronage policies.

"Companies with
interests across economic sectors often rely on government contracts or
regulation," write Max Hoffman and Michael Werz in a recent Center for American
Progress report, "leading to situations where they are asked or decide to apply
pressure to limit political criticism, which could jeopardize those interests
or contracts. Numerous journalists cited instances where they were told to tone
down government criticism or had columns pulled because of such concerns. This
pressure manifests itself in direct pressure on news outlets owners from
government officials and more subtle forms of self-censorship from editors and
journalists afraid of dismissals."

This pitiful coverage
of the protest movement by a number of leading media outlets was indeed preceded
by a string of incidents that already illustrated that pattern of corporate and
internal censorship and confirmed Marc Pierini, former EU Ankara ambassador's
assertion in his report, Press
Freedom in Turkey. "A media sector that is defined by
corporations' drive to maximize profits in other sectors is bound to face major
difficulties in fulfilling its essential role of checking and balancing the
government," he wrote.

In a detailed profile
of the Turkish media landscape, Le Monde's
Istanbul correspondent, Guillaume Perrier, listed some of the most egregious
and visible cases of media bosses bowing to the government's whims. "Hasan
Cemal, a longtime columnist of the Milliyet daily was fired after a skirmish
with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on the Kurdish issue," he wrote. "Amberin
Zaman, a correspondent for the British weekly The Economist, was forced to leave Habertürkunder
pressure from a government member."

The government has had
no qualms in forcing media companies to fall into line. In 2009, the mammoth Dogan
group, very critical of the Erdoğan government and close to the old Kemalist
and military establishment, was targeted by a crushing tax fine and forced to
sell off some of its top media jewels, like the Milliyet and Vatan dailies.
Another large media group, Sabah, was sold to Calik, a company co-owned by Erdoğan's
son-in-law.

These business deals
have restricted pluralism, beefed up the stable of pro-government media and
sent a chilling message to the rest of the sector: behave, tone down your
criticism, or else pay the consequences.

The capacity of the
state to intimidate owners is a major constraint on the right of journalists to
report and comment on the news. Self-censorship seeps in and deprives the
public of essential information. It also puts the journalists in danger by making
them appear as accomplices or stenographers kowtowing to the state. In fact, as
the recent events testify, the Turkish media structure and its relations with
the state will define the future of press freedom as much as the legislative
arsenal and legal reform packages.

Turkey's mainstream
media are at a crossroads: They will have to choose between cozying up to power
at the risk of further alienating the public, or fulfilling their journalistic
duties and in doing so potentially losing lucrative government contracts. As
former Washington Post publisher Eugene
Meyer said: "In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make
sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public
good."

Prime Minister Erdoğan
is at a crossroads, too. The protests, their coverage, and the police reaction
have highlighted the state of the media and of press freedom in Turkey. The
government must decide whether it considers free, independent, and uninhibited
journalism as a threat to its rule or as a constitutive pillar of a modern and
vibrant democracy. Its choice will largely determine the future and the
reputation of the country. The whole world is watching.

[Reporting from Istanbul and Brussels]

CPJ Europe Representative Marthoz is a Belgian journalist and longtime press freedom and human rights activist. He teaches international journalism at the Université catholique de Louvain and is a columnist for the Belgian daily Le Soir.